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Some musings on process and the mission of Thriving Systems Design, LLC.

Some musings on process and the mission of Thriving Systems Design, LLC.

Posted by Rider
on
August 24, 2015

Thriving Systems Design is currently still solely run by me, its founder. However, as I write these blogs, I endeavor do so under the auspices of a company larger than myself; and I strive to uphold the mission I've imparted to its name: Thriving Systems Design is a concept more than it is anything else.

Don't get me wrong. I have a team and they are all valued and recompensed and our economy is better off because of all the folks I occupy with my ambitions. But what I have built to support this mechanism is my own, thus far - with a lot of help from my friends.

I'll share that I've studied tai chi for many years. No matter how you spell it or do it; it is a profound art. Like anything we endeavor to understand deeply, tai chi to me is something that can never be fully plumbed. We learn the forms and the posture and we mimic what we think we are seeing. It is a game of approximation that requires adherence to rules just as much as it requires thought and imagination. After a while you get the feel and the understanding becomes easier.

I think about my garden in terms of the practice of this art. And mind you, I am no master- a middling novice at best, but I have some understanding as to the principals of the art and hope to share something of that here in this forum on gardening.

And so the thought that I am offering is the following:

That there is broad value in knowing the technique of a thing and

there is deeper value in understanding the principal of a thing:

For that principal lends itself to a better understanding of all things related to that thing, including the execution of technique.

Growth is a spiral....We can focus on hand position or pH, what the next move is or what kind of soil to use or which lens has the best UV penetration/filtration/spectrum/qi potential... No doubt, the science or geometry of a thing is essential. One can't argue that. But often we perpetuate its practice with a kind of faith that continually reproduces the successes that maintain it. Science should be a forum in which our ideas are subject to mutation - a major factor in evolution...

Form is one thing and function is another and principal may be something else all together.

Going beyond following a form that is regimented and repeated, we should look for its purpose, for therein lies its function. It is also a clue to the principal. I've translated this thought to: the principal is the basis of the technique which is executed only in relation to that principal.

The Principal defines the expression of the technique, and

As the understanding of principals deepens, the technique is shifted to permit deepening of its function: It is that basis which develops understanding of principals in the first place.